FAQs

What is VoIP?

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol .Sometimes it is referred to as Voice over Networks or (VoN), Voice over Broadband (VoB) and sometimes Internet Telephony. VoIP allows you to make free, or very low cost, telephone calls over the Internet. You can call any telephone in the world and any telephone can call you - regardless of what equipment or network the person you are calling uses.

Also, because VoIP uses, digital, internet technologies (sip) many new features and services that were previously impossible, or very expensive using traditional telephone technology, become available. With Mox this means we can give you many free features such as voicemail, voicemails sent to you email, music on hold, call diverts etc.

But you don’t need to know anything about the technologies used if you don’t want to, after all, you probably don’t know that ordinary telephony uses TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) but your telephone still works.

Your voice is converted into digital information which can be sent like any other data over the internet. People are often confused by this but the way to think about it is that your internet connection uses the same wires as your normal landline telephone and can be uses to transmit all kinds of things such as faxes, telephone calls, emails, instant messages, web pages and Google searches – what makes the difference is simply what is plugged into the wires.

Before we get too far into the technology, we need to squash a myth. People tend to think that VoIP is about cheap calls - and it’s true that VoIP calls are cheap - but the real benefit of VoIP is that calls can be totally free and that all sorts of new services become possible with them.

Calls can be free not because we’re a charity but because you’ve already paid for them in your monthly broadband subscription. When you make a call over the internet your voice is converted to data and sent like any other piece of data down your internet connection; just like web surfing and email; you don’t have to pay again to use it. So, if you call another Mox user anywhere in the world, it’s a free call – you only pay if you call an old fashioned telephone network.

Well yes, it can seem that way at first, but it needn't be. One of the great strengths of Internet Telephone networks is that they can do so much more than ordinary telephone networks. In practice Mox’s services can be as simple as making an ordinary telephone call or as complicated as using a large business switchboard in several countries. We find that most customers start with the simple services and progress to the more sophisticated as they learn more.

Normally you just to pick up your phone and dial the number! The most primitive form of VoIP uses your PC as a telephone and we provide you with a software telephone – a softphone – to do this. This displays a model of a telephone on your screen and you simply type the number to be dialled in or click on the phone’s directory to dial the number. You can either use your PCs speakers and microphone of use a simple headset to talk.

For business use though, most people use purpose built VoIP telephones or telephone adapters with ordinary telephones plugged in. Apart from the obvious benefits of convenience to use and quality of call this method means that your telephones work even when your PC is switched off.

You can call anyone, anywhere on any type of telephone or network. The receiver of the call needs to have no special equipment and won’t know what kind of call he is receiving. However, if the person receiving your call is another Mox customer the call will be free – no matter where he is located in the world.

Normally the call will sound identical to an ordinary telephone call – you won’t be able to tell the difference. If your call is to another Mox customer and you are both using Mox and VoIP telephones the call quality is much better than an ordinary call – this is because it is transmitted digitally end to end at nearly CD quality sound.

VOIP

Since VoIP greatly depends on the internet and your link to the internet, it can happen that when you are downloading something big as fast as your speed, you will hear breaking up of the other party. Similarly if you are sending an email with a big attachment for instance, it will happen that your voice is not heard properly on the other side. To prevent this, make sure you don't do these actions while on the phone, or have a bandwidth-managing router to help out.

On the first question, outside phones can still reach you. Just dial 62486060, wait for the system to ask you the extension, and then dial the phone you wish to reach. Of course, a real phone number which can be had for small monthly fee is much more convenient for people to call you.

On the second question all VoIP phones can call outside of the network, just like normal phones. I.e. Singapore numbers simply dial as normal, and IDD numbers use 007xxxxxxxx.... or 001, or 15xx or whatever you were used to to dial overseas.

Yes, usually the fine print will show you that it only applies to land lines (which are cheap for many countries), and "normal" usage is expected. This means it is up to the provider to interpret what is normal. I.e. if you own a call shop and you want to make use of this unlimited account, your joy will be short-lived.

Also the monthly fees will always cover the usage. In general these free unlimited usage is only between IP phones, where it is really free unlimited, but as soon as a normal phone gets involved, there are limitations. For USD 79.00 (a typical plan) one can make *a lot* of calls, making it feel like unlimited (but then again, nobody can hang on the phone unlimited time to chat).

While compression is achievable with voice, faxing is quite different. Actually a fax modem is converting an image (e.g. a document, picture, etc.) into an analogue signal, and modulates it over an appropriate carrier frequency of the sound spectrum. The signal travels through landlines to reach the other fax modem that actually recognizes the fax signal, demodulates it and converts it back to an image.

So here is the big problem. Compression means some loss in signal spectrum, phase and amplitude. There is no way this loss to be recovered. So a somewhat damaged or modified signal reaches the receiving modem. No device or algorithms can convert a compressed signal the way it was before compression. Otherwise there would have never been any problem with broadband requirements or disk space availability.

This is why faxing over almost can VoIP never work properly and if it does "work", it behaves quite unpredictably, and the result images are often unrecognisable. VoIP is based on compression for the sake of broadband while faxing is based on a nearly perfect conversion of images.

Some Adapters (a.k.a. ATA's) claim they do T.38, which is the protocol used for faxing over VoIP, but most implementations of this are in the beginning stage and are usually not compatible between different brands or even the same brand/different model ATA. You may be lucky though.

The Mox VoIP Service requires a functional and reliable broadband Internet connection. IP Phones or ATA require a spare Ethernet connection and wireless IP phones require a home or business wireless network. For Mox Control access, you will require any recent browser like Mozilla or Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later.

Most IP phones and ATA use a standard Ethernet connection, which is the same as a LAN connection on a PC. The IP phone will be plugged into your local computer network exactly the same as a normal computer. The exception to this is the wireless IP phone, which doesn't use any cables but uses the wireless gateway/access-point instead.

VoIP Lines use codec, a compression technique, which means the calls are very small in comparison with a traditional telephone call. We currently use the codec G.729 that uses approximately 13kbps per call (64kbps for a traditional call) and provides good voice quality. There are lower bandwidth codes available for use on our service however this will impact on call quality

Calls will be billed in the normal manner. Essentially you are using Internet bandwidth at the hotspot so the phone will be billed from any location. You will also have to pay the hotspot computer for the Internet usage, the same as you would with a laptop.

The quality of service can only be controlled where the customer has an un-contended broadband connection and has a router with quality of service. Most ADSL connections do not have this currently so the quality of the call cannot be guaranteed.

Yes, in effect you can register for 2 VoIP Lines because you have a 2-line adapter - i.e.: 1 phone account for each line. If you are a new customer, register for a single account on the web site or from the cd-rom. Once you have your first account set up, you will have access to our Mox Control panel (username and password is e-mailed to you). From this, you can set-up additional broadband phone accounts for the second line on your Cisco ATA. You should then configure your Cisco to use both SIP usernames and passwords supplied by us.

If you have a technical problem with your VoIP service, please go through our troubleshooting guide sent to you. If you still cannot find the answer to the problem, please e-mail
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You will pay less per month than for a normal telephone line (if you only use cablemodem). Furthermore you save a lot on IDD calls, and if you have family and friends overseas you can ask them to sign up with us as well, and you can make unlimited free calls to eachother.

Follow-Me is forwarded strictly via the normal telephone system (wholesale carriers) to the PSTN / mobile number overseas, whereas VoIP DDI's start with 3 and adhere to different levels of service as well as routed over the internet strictly.

Typically we do not as we don't ask for any set-up fees for a normal account. So you are technically not bound by any minimum membership. Since the margins for VoIP calls are very low, all we ask is a small deposit, even a few dollars will do if you want to make "test" calls.

Only in certain circumstances you would need this. Before you subscribe to an International Callback DDI, try first triggering a call to +6562489000 and see if you get a callback, if not, then try dialing +6597311359. If you still don't get a callback, then we can't see your caller-id and you would need to subscribe to a callback DDI.

Yes, for sure, on average you still save about 50-70% of your roaming bill as an incoming roaming call is cheaper than an outgoing call. Especially if you are not calling back to Singapore, but to another country, your savings are substantial.

Fax

Typically within 5 minutes the fax would have been delivered. If there are problems, or the destination fax is busy, the system usually retries up to 5 times with various intervals. In any case you would get a notification on failed delivery as well as successful delivery if you chose to have that.

You can send as many as you like, a 10.000 fax broadcast typically lasts a little over an hour to send to all the recipients, after which another try is done in case the destination fax was busy. We do recommend to have 3 retries in total, with the first fax sent in the evening, 2nd try the next morning, and 3rd try the next afternoon. That way you make sure the fax is not bounced because the receiving end switches off the machine, or ran out of paper.

Call Back

If you do the calculations and read the fine-print right, you will notice that you will be charged airtime for those calls, typically around 15.75 cents or more per minute, so your "free" call is not really free... Our rates are pretty competitive and for some countries it'll be cheaper to use our callback than to use the "free" usage of the mobile provider.

It happens that for instance in Malaysia when roaming with some providers you can't trigger a callback like you used to do in Singapore. This can be resolved by using *121 (in the case of Singtel) or simply use SMS callback where you give the command "Call to our SMS centre... That will work in most cases.

Yes, compared to normal roaming charges you can still save up to 50% more using our service, especially if you call countries other than Singapore from where you are. One could use *121 to call Singapore (or your providers' equivalent), the price difference there would not be so great, but for calling every other country from outside Singapore it's definitely better to use our service (as the mobile provider would apply the standard 001 rates).